Make Room For…

A mushroom walks into a bar and the bar tender says “We don’t serve your kind around here”

The mushroom says “ ahh come on, I’m a fungi”

On a more serious note, mushrooms are a healthy, nutritious snack that anyone can enjoy. I have even heard them referred to as “meat for vegetarians”. I don’t know about that as the protein content is not high, but you could do a lot worse than choosing to eat them.

One of the main reasons for eating them would be for the phyto nutrient content. We all know our macro nutrients, fat, protein and carbs and our micro nutrients which are minerals and vitamins, but phyto nutrients are different. There are far too many of them to list and I’m not even sure if they have all been discovered yet, but they are nutrients only found in plant products with each having their own unique phyto nutrients.

Mushrooms are also a very rich source of vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin. We don’t always have access to sunshine all year round so eating it is necessary through the winter months. Cod liver oil is another great source of vitamin D, but how many of you can actually handle the taste of it? I actually enjoy it, but I’m wierd.

You may not have heard of a thing called ORAC, but it is the capability of a food to fight free radicals. The higher the score, the more antioxidants a food contains. Mushrooms have a relatively high ORAC score. They also contain high levels of selenium, a mineral that is a very potent antioxidant.

Mushrooms as a whole category of food covers many different varieties with so many different phyto nutrients, it would be a very wise choice to eat as many different types as you can. But as a society we tend to stick to one common variety, the button mushroom. My advice would be to go out and see how many different varieties you can get your hands on. Shiitake, portobello, crimini, and especially cordyceps which is considered the performance enhancing mushroom. Body builders have been using them for years and they have been used in Chinese medicine for centuries. Their benefits are wide and varied, but for us as athletes, they boost our energy levels by increasing our ATP levels, increasing our oxygen utilization and even boosting our testosterone levels.

So make some room for mushrooms in your diet and see how it can boost your performance levels.